


Bad Things Happen Bingo Writings

by TayyibesTeaTutorials



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Original Work
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Gen, Gen Work, Hurt/Comfort, Severitus | Severus Snape is Harry Potter's Parent, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27588499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayyibesTeaTutorials/pseuds/TayyibesTeaTutorials
Summary: My fics for a Bad Things Happen Bingo Card. Mostly orignal work, mostly Severitus.Enjoy
Relationships: Harry Potter & Severus Snape, Hero & villain, Original Character(s) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. Taking You With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus is given another chance.

It doesn’t feel right yet.

Jupiter is off balance, he can hear Trelawney screaming into his ear over breakfast, and the stars shine in all the wrong places.

“It doesn’t feel right, yet,” the Headmaster can agree, hand deftly picking up a sherbet lemon from the bowl that is always full, “Not yet.”

Severus denied it, of course, because the stars have never been right for him and Jupiter with all its glory is still a spec in the sky he’s eyes drown in, his soul to bask in…

“Give me a chance,” he asks at twenty three, chances as much as the years he’s lived shoved under the carpet, “Give me another chance.”

“What will you do with this chance, Severus?”

The bowl of sherbet lemons sits between them, overflowing with the sweets filled to the brim. They are sweet, sweet on the tongue. The tongue years of swallowed words have grown sour.

Tongue, gaze, smile, dreams… The task of listing things that haven’t rotten under his touch would be easier to accumulate. Spoiled secrets, ignored demons.

The chances shoved under the carpet, carless and above all afraid.

Because it was still him, under the mask he’s foolish self had carved as his own. Still him, with his second hand muggle shoes and the thrift store pants trimmed to fit him around the waist.

Severus wants another chance. The cast-off lives and chances rotting, ignored. So no, it doesn’t feel right yet.

Like the mask, Severus is willing to carve this chance until it does, just like he’d done then. Only this time, Minerva can scold him, the mother he found too late, the friend he accepted too slow. Minerva can scold him, support him and all the things Jupiter would rather not have her do.

The stars are wrong.

For Severus, they’ve been written that way.

“I will make it ours,” Severus dares to say, and the guilt of his heart weighs like the snow drawn paths of the woods. Heavy, terrifying, their road uncrossed. This, Severus knows. For this, he doesn’t make the chance his.

“For him, I will make it ours.”

“You’d wear your heart on your sleeve, Severus?”

Severus’ chuckle isn’t kind, and the bitter sound lingers in the air, the spell fuelled by a different sort of magic.

Regret, as emotions tend to be, come in muggle and wizard both.

Severus wears his heart on his sleeve, his love knows no bounds. That very love brings him to the Dursley’s one Christmas evening, the child pressed to his chest, snow on his cheeks. It’s what drives him to kiss Harry’s forehead, his tongue still bitter, the broken button on his sleeve still healing, his world still hating him from the shoes on his feet and the thoughts in his head.

“There’s a house by the coast, Harry,” he whispers to the child, gentler than what either of them are accustomed to, “Right by the sea, where the shells shine and the water ripples at your feet, despite who you may be. I’m going there.”

He lifts his coat, the apparition magic flowing around him, pulling the sleeping child closer, lips pressed above his hair.

“I’m taking you with me.”

Number 4 is silent once more that evening, unaware of what they’ve lost. Unwilling to learn the future to come.

That is fine with Severus. Because there is a house by the coast, and a (new) father is healing.

And the world continues.


	2. Don't You Dare Fear Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Original work. A villain parent and hero child.

“You’re lost.”

“And you’re not making things better.”

The villain raised a brow. A delicate expression, gaining the desired rage from the hero, far from their accustomed arena they may be.

The villain stopped closer, careless enough, hands stuffed in their jacket pockets, “You’ve always been easy to bait. Easy to goat. I’m not surprised.

“No,” the hero claimed, their will yet to break, leaking their bottled wrath like fumes desperate to escape, “No, you wouldn’t be surprised-” the knife slid jarringly across the concrete, not gaining a flinch from the villain perched on the edge of the roof, “-You always found it easy to lure me.”

“Oh, child,” the villain breathed, the city stretched under their feet, dark to the brim. Filled with lives that so desperately ignored the death the villain inched their direction, “I raised you.”

The hero missed, feet scraping the edge. Their breath caught, a dissolving mist. 

The villain was a dissolving mist. Almost there. Barely alive. Powerful, manipulative and not the hero’s guardian. Not looking at the hero tight in the eye, their hand claiming their wrist, holding it over the edge in a gloved hold.

“I taught you.”

The knife fell from their hand into the city. The city that hated the villain for reminding them of death. The city that hated the hero for reminding them of failure.

The city that hated.

The city that was theirs.

“You sculpted me,” the hero hissed, the bricks digging into their back, the cold fronting small, pained tears, “You wanted to change me. To make me a monster.”

“I wanted to make you mine,” the villain said, correcting. Admittingly. In a confession that hid no layer of lies, nor pulled a smile from his lips or a glitter from dead eyes, “My child. My legacy. My honor and my future. You changed. You left.”

“You are mad.”

“And you are lost.”

“Don’t you dare pity me!” 

The surge of anger didn’t pull the villain back. The hero liked to pretend it wasn’t the crack in their voice, or the stream of tears bushing their cheeks that made the villain stand back, the crinkle in his eyes spelling concern, their brows furrowed in worry. 

“Child-” 

“Don’t you dare pity me,” the hero repeated, more for their own good, rubbing at the tears the wind was so keen on biting, “Don’t you dare find me either. I’ve left. I’m never coming back.”

And the hero left. 

And the child never came back.


	3. Dream Curse,s Wish Cures. (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad Things Happen Bingo #3 - Cry into Chest
> 
> Harry gets hit with a curse that makes him live his worse fear. One he needs to get out himself. Only problem? It's curse-Severus trying to make sure he never wakes up.

Harry keeps the wishing jar closed.

He’s kept it closed all this time, under loose floorboard, charmed wardrobes and the little invisibility cloak he hasn’t touched since-

When his eyes close, the tears slip past anyway, tearing down the wish he was folding in his hand. The ink is smudged, the words a blur and the moving figures of the Daily Prophet scatter to get away from the spreading water and suddenly he’s young. Too young to be here, stuck in a cupboard, like today folding wish stars out of the newspapers Aunt Petunia because he’s not allowed the colorful paper like the rest of the class.

Somehow, he's young again, and the world is too big for those folded stars he’s made his wishes.

Summer rain hits the open cottage window, the remaining specs of light collecting on the dusty floors. The room smells of old wood and wet soil, used books spread on the floor like fallen leaves and the sea is gentle against the beach sand when he can’t afford to be gentle with himself.

Snape smiled from the corner of the room, only visible to Harry’s eye.

Another star drops to the floor, and the counter he’s set clicks into 690, flashing green and bright.

“You want to get out.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Snape says, walking towards him in the form of a haze, no sound from his steps. He presses a hand to his shoulder, like the touch of a breeze in summer. A brush, a thin string of hold that made you want more of that relief.

The last strips of sunlight were swept clean from the floor, retreating back out the window, the rain too cold now that the sun had sunk. Gone.

Snape is here.

Snape is dead.

“Harry, we can leave,” Snape says, and Harry turned around, and Snape followed, down on one knee, both hands on his shoulders, “Don’t you want to leave?”

“I want to leave this place,” Harry snaps, trying to push Snape away. His hands dives into where Snape’s shoulder is meant to be, marking a hole and chilling his skin. Curse-Snape raises a brow, brushing his shoulder, and stepping around him again.

“Don’t you see, Harry? You’re not happy. You’ve never been happy.”

The newspaper tears easily between Harry’s fingers, a thin stripe joining the line of nine others. Then, Harry starts folding, and he is young again. Working on the little stars without the light of morning, the dim flashlight lighting his folds. And when the flashlight dies, he needs no light to path the way.

Knot, fold, punch, drop.

Knot, fold, punch, drop.

Knot, fold, punch-

His hand stills at the hand brushing his hair back, a free hand messaging his shoulder. Harry closes his eyes, and continues like that, the click of the counter the only noise disturbing the rain.

Knot, fold, punch, drop.

And Snape presses a kiss to his forehead, so like the Sunday afternoons warm in the dungeon, when the future feels like a bargain of fate Harry had no hope of surviving. It’s enough for Harry to cut his finger on the page, the scar healing without giving the blood enough time to collect.

There is no pain.

Snape chuckles beside his ear, “See, Harry? There’s no pain here. No sadness. No Dark Lord. We’re here. I’m here and I am not dead.”

“You... you were dead?” Harry’s whisper is a notch above pained, a notch below confusion. The invisibility cloak sits in the closet, he knows, hiding and Harry can’t seem to remember why.

“I was, I still am, where the world is cruel and fate won’t ask for your consent when they come to play,” the words hang between them and the 695th star, sitting idly in the palm of Harry’s right hand, where there had never been any scar.

“Where Cedric dies. Sirius dies. Where I die. Do you want to go there, Harry?”

No. Harry doesn’t want to go there. He turns around. So does Snape.

There’s a smile on his face that Harry hadn’t seen before, Snape’s hand coming to brush the side of Harry’s face, no longer stained, his skin healthy. Eyes bright. Hair clean. The shadows under his eyes are gone, and his body is no longer the skeletal figure Harry for some reason remembers.

And when he leans into Snape’s chest, the tears already streaming from his face, Snape’s lean fingers truffle the hair that falls on that spot of his forehead where there had never been a scar.

“Three days,” Harry manages between his sobs, breathing in the smell of Snape’s robes that smell the sea, “Three days, and I will decide.”

“Of course, Harry,” Snape whispers, drawiıng his arms around him, smiling into his hair, “Of course, son.”


	4. Dream Curse, Wish Cure. (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BTHB #4 - Falling Through the Ice
> 
> It's winter when Harry finally falls through the ice

It’s the first day.

And in the cottage near the sea, there is no cold and emotions weighing him down. The stars sit alone in his room, three abandoned stripes lifting up and down with the gentle wind that blows inside. 

The sea, warm against Harry’s feet, smells fresh and exactly what he imagines it to smell like. Lapping against the thin, pale sand; an ironed sheet stretching further than the eye can see, wrapping around the sun when it’s time for it to rest.

Harry feels home. 

Snape is waiting for him in the kitchen before dinner, and Harry can’t seem to remember why he thought Snape as dead. The knife held between his slender fingers chop down on the carrots, his eye meeting Harry’s when he walks in, cuffs folded up his scrawny legs, socks and shoes at hand.

“Wash your feet first,” Snape says, nodding towards the bathroom.

There is no dirt to wash off his feet, but Harry washes them anyway, and dries them on towels smelling of vanilla, seemingly knit from the clouds and soft silk. 

It’s the first day, and Snape teaches him how to cook, a hand over Harry’s knife wielding fingers, holding them steady. Harry doesn’t have the heart to tell Snape he knows how to cook when Snape compliments him, not able to hold in the smile when he gently ruffles his hair. 

It’s the first day, and the food tastes like contentment gift wrapped into an envelope, sealed with the warm morning sun. With every book Harry reads, a new one sits in its place the next time his eyes land on it, the spine old with the years of collected dust. 

He wonders between hazy thoughts if they ever talked like the way there are now, that first night. Window open, the delicate wind picking up the light blue curtains, words comfortably exchanged. Laughter, confessions. The topics circulating between memories they have shared, and the memories they have yet to make.

Harry wonders why he ever thought about odd names like Hermione, Ron and Hogwarts when Snape helped him sleep into warm dreams, no potion, no magic needed. Just his gentle voice, leaving Harry’s thoughts wandering into warm places, a warm sleep.

Here is warmth, and here Harry sleeps. 

It’s the second day, and winter doesn’t hurt. Harry wakes up to a cold winter morning, and though the crunching snow seeps between his toes, a cool shiver shooting up his spine, it’s just a feeble touch on his bare skin, like those of soft feathers. It’s cold, the breakfast is warm and Snape’s hot cocoa warms his fingers, just as Snape’s hand warms the hair he’s touched, and the hand-knit blanket warms his shoulders. 

“The sea must be frozen.”

“Wasn’t it always frozen?” 

Snape’s thin hides behind his hair, his long fingers placing another cup on the table for the warmth to spread inside of Harry, “Have you ever ice skated?” 

The cup’s brim brushes his lip, and the warmth pauses. He thinks he hasn’t, a door slammed to his face when he dared ask for it. But Snape looks at him with dark eyes bright with curiosity, helping Harry lift the cup for a sip, “I think that’s a no.”

“Will you teach me?” 

Snape tilts his head with a smile, and the snow is not cold when they step out in their clothes sewn with warm wool, with warm love. Snape takes his hand, helps him past the sand and past the snow. Harry’s blades shake, and so does Harry, clinging madly on Snape’s arm lest he fall. 

He doesn’t, and their laughter is a lonely one, the only for miles. Their laughter is a happy one, the only one that carries like the wind; through the trees, through their leaves. A drop of summer while the world rests, a sweet dream as spring sleeps under heavy, cold sheets. The ice creaks seldom, and when it does, it’s to them racing, sometimes almost falling, sometimes almost winning. 

“You have skated before.”

“Would I lie to you?”

Snape brushes the snow from his hair, rolling his eyes, his long coat flying around him while he stops just in front of Harry, blades skidding, “A winter has passed.”

The sun is veiled silently behind white clouds, and Harry agrees, “A winter has passed.”

“And you have yet to call me your father.”

When Harry turns to face Snape, it’s to painful eyes with a crease on the skin to mark their sorrow. He wants to argue, but the guilt weighs like heavy blankets of snow, freezing to the touch, death to sleep under.

“I’m sorry,” he reaches out a hand, before the tears can mark their will, “I’m sorry, dad.”

Harry hears the ice creak, and the smile on Snape’s lips turn oh so quickly into a frown. 

The water is cold, and the world is dark as Harry falls through the ice.

The world is cold.

And then, the world is no more


	5. The Wish Jar (pt 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BTHB #5 - Stuggling Against the Caretaker

Spring arrives as Harry opens his eyes, the patrichor of the April showers mixing with the cherry blossoms. Strange. Harry cannot remember cherry blossoms at Hogwarts, or spring showers being so delicate.

When he turns around, head dipping down on the silk sheets, his eye catches the crack between in the wardrobe, a glint of light in the murky darkness.

Oddly enough, he feels a voice urge him towards it, whispering incomprehensible words hidden behind a wall of water. Harry struggled to a stand, and limps towards the window, with each step surging delicate strands of pain up his leg.

Now why on earth would his leg hurt?

The window struggles, wrenched and stubborn. Harry has to go save his nails from breaking, curling his hands into fists. And if possible, the smell is somehow stronger. Ruthless. A perfumed poison, cheap like the ones in Uncle Vernon’s car.

Uncle Vernon’s...car?

Harry’s head spins, and the pain jolting up his leg is more profound. The glint calls for him, growing brighter. Brighter. Like a wishing star, the single hope he’s collected in the palm of his hand when the nights grow darker and longer.

“Wishing star,” Harry repeats the words, and it doesn’t matter how much his leg hurts or how fast he spins; because the wardrobe door is wrenched open and from under a familiar cut of fabric glints a jar of stars, in reds, blues, black and white newspaper folds. Harry cries out when he lifts the jar up, collapsing on the floor with it pulled against his chest.

Following his crash comes another from the other side of the door, Snape; alive and frantic, comes hurling towards the room, hair tied up like Harry had recommended he do.

...Alive and frantic?

Since when was Snape dead?

“Harry, oh thank Merlin you’re awake,” Snape’s voice is honeyed and concerned, no different than the cheap smell of the cherry blossoms; overbearing like the scents clouding Professor Trelawney’s classroom.

Harry scurries away when Snape steps forward, almost falling when he stands up.

“Harry, what’s wrong?” Snape asks, a hand brushing Harry’s hair, feeling his forehead. Harry is quick to slap it away, though, shaking his head with wide eyes. He places the jar on the desk of the room, starting to turn drawer after drawer out to find the remaining of the stars.

The stars he doesn’t remember how he learnt about.

“Harry,” Snape tries to touch him again, hurt creasing the lines of his face when Harry flinches away, growling, “Where are my stars?”

“Harry —”

“I said where are my stars!” Harry screams without looking, picking up the jar and starting to move towards the living room, hands shaking whale he throws open books and ornaments, angrily ripping out pages when new books arrive in the place of others.

“I’m not playing your games anymore!” Harry screams, throwing books behind him towards where he assumed Snape is standing, breaking the glass decorations as he clumsily runs towards the kitchen and the bathroom, giving it the same treatment.

Snape only watches, a concerned frown on his face, and doesn’t keep Harry from messing up his room and laboratory. Harry only grows relentless with each fruitless search, the sky seemingly growing brighter and warmer to oppose his own emotions.

When he finds no stars, the pain no longer accepts, pricks and bites piercing his leg as he collapses, jar still held towards his chest. This time, without a word is how Snape approaches him, a finger to wipe away the tears wetting the aged, old jelly jar in his hands.

“Why would you need stars, son?” Snape whispers, and there is also a tear in his cheek, meeting Harry’s ones down on the jar, “I thought we had gone over this, Harry?”

“We went over nothing,” Harry spits out, glaring with the last effort he still had, “I need those stars, and you will give it to me.”

“You’re asking me to kill you?”

“I’m asking —, no, I’m _telling_ you to free me.”

“And what’s the difference if the only freedom the world will give you is when you no longer breathe?”

The glare falls from Harry’s eyes, and he has no words when Snape continues, his arms coming around Harry’s shoulders, “Tell me I’m wrong, I plead of you. Tell me that, when you leave, freedom is what you leave to, and not to what fate has prepared you for you at the end of a killing wand.”

“You think I don’t know that!” Harry shouts, pushing away Snape’s hands and struggling to a stand, “You think I’m not terrified? You think I’m not sick to my stomach every time I think about the death I’ve cost? You think I don’t have a breakdown every time I imagine people dying because of me?”

“Of course I know, son,” Snape cries, voice laced with the panging hurt, genuine sorrow curved into the letter, “Of course I do! Why do you think I wish you’d stay, where spring is warm and winter is warmer. Where we are together, and you can forget the world and the fate you weren’t even meant to be a part of.”

“If I forget — ” Harry wipes his tears harshly, blinking the tears away “ — If I forget, I won’t be me.”

“You will be free… free with me.”

Harry chuckles, another tear sliding down the jam jar, “You think I don’t want that? To die? To leave everything and be happy?”

“And you can,” a smile cracks open on Snape’s lips, wide and ugly, “You can, and you may. You’ll have everything and — ”

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispered, taking a step back, closing his eyes at the satisfying sound of creaking floorboards. He doesn’t pick it up right away, and instead, he walks to the living room, where Snape always keeps a newspaper on the black armchair. Straps of paper come loose freely, the ritual of knot, punch, fold and drop earning Harry another five stars, ones he keeps safe in his pockets.

Snape watches from the doorway.

“Figuring it out is the easy part,” he says in a voice that isn’t quite his, a curve of anger on the brim, “Summer will come and go by the time you finish a thousand.”

“Summer has already come,” Harry says, ducking under his arm. The floorboard comes loose just as easy as the straps of paper, and Harry has jars of 995 little stars. The furious expression on Snape’s face isn't quite his, either; a dark shadow to the edge of his scowl, a reflection of fear to the eyes he’s pulled to a glare, “You’re losing a chance. The man you call father is doomed to die, Harry Potter, just like you. You could have had it all.”

“And could you?” Harry says when the sun begins to set, the last day of August. Four jars all crash down, and the pain is stronger; the light of the sun burning his skin. Nothing happens, and curse-Snape grins; ugly and with ashen teeth.

“Summer is leaving.”

“And so am I,” Harry says, tears still falling. He lifts the stars from his pocket, and they fall one by one, and this time the sun won’t burn the wishes that were never its.

“You won’t get another summer, Harry Potter,” the shadow hisses, distraught between shapes Harry has met and those he hasn’t, “Your world has no summer! The winter always lasts, and there is no escape from pain.”

“That’s the beauty of love, dad,” Harry says barely above a whisper as the last star falls, seconds before the last light of the hot August day, “Love is always, no matter the winters it has to pass.”

The world spins, and so does Harry. A cloud of smoke, ash and pain all enveloping him like a storm. From the ashes and the flames, Harry sees Snape, his blood ruling scresma mixing into the storm.

Summer leaves, and before Harry does too, his words remain.

“Thank you, dad.”

And then, summer is no more.

*

Summer is no more when Harry wakes up either, screaming and wet with tears and sweat.

There are sounds, there are always sounds, but somehow they are stronger, familiar. The ones that aren’t the soft touches from a dream he can’t remember, but the ones found in concern, ones human.

Ones alive.

Harry gasps for air, shooting from the bed, eyes wide and screaming.

“Dad! _DAD_! Please dad, _PLEASE_! **_DAD_**!”

Madam Pomfrey wrestles him to lie down, and so does Ron; they’re trying to tell him something, while Professor Pomrey tries to push something down his throat.

That’s when Snape arrives, looking as through he’d suffered a hundred years of misery, suffering and disease. He takes Harry from the pair of arms, curling his around him instead, protective and afraid.

Snape isn’t affectionate. Snape isn’t the one to show his love for the world to see.

Neither Snape or Harry mind when he presses a kiss to Harry’s forehead, a few tears dripping down on Harry’s hairline.

That’s when Harry finally accepts the Calming Draught.

And that is when Harry finally, truly sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final part, hopefully, next week :)


	6. The Wish Jar (final)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BTHB #6 - Never got to say goodbye
> 
> I apologise for the late chapter.

Harry Potter-Snape opens his eyes to an unkind world.

The fire, too hot, burns him under the heavy blankets; and the rain, too loud, drums against the window.

The window was -is- unkind.

Harry sighs, resting his head on the too-soft pillow, weighed under the too-warm sheets. 

"Harry," a voice from the doorway sings. Tired, relieved. A thousand emotions lost in a storm. Harry says 'sings', and the thought humours him into a smile, urging his eyes open because he is here.

He is home.

Severus rarely breaks decorum. In fact, he makes it quite clear it's something that he doesn't do. 

You don't wear your heart on your sleeve, when everything is fair in war. 

And nothing is fair in love. 

The shaking hands cradling his cheek tell a different story. The trembling fingers through his hair paint a million memories Harry didn't need to be awake to experience. 

The world is too warm. 

And for a stubborn, painful moment… it is a bit less unkind.

"I've left," says Harry, his voice allowing horse whispers Severus hushes with words that are gentler than the world had been to him, "I've left, and I don't know what to say."

"An apology," Severus kisses the crown of his head, above the scar that tied their futures, "For putting me through that misery."

Harry chuckles, cheeks dusted warmer than the fire as Severus' hands lift him from the sofa. The cold embraces him first. 

And then the only kindness in this unjust world.

His father is old. The years have settled on his shoulders, mindless of what they could carry. His father is old, not because he's spent years others have not, but because while others had their chance to grow up… Severus Snape was left to grow old. 

His father is old.

And he smells of hours shut in his apothecary, herbs and fumes of prions marking his scent. 

"I dreamt," Harry says again, settling his chin on Severus' shoulder. Dreamt is the start of the sentence, because the only difference between a dream and nightmare is not what you see, but how you see it. 

He has dreamt, because it is the most bittersweet sleep he has the curse to wake up from. 

"I dreamt we were happy, you know. Truly happy, without worry."

"Are we not happy?" Severus asks, knowing the answer. Silence clogs Harry's throat, suffocating him with the heavy words his heart burdens. So he doesn't speak.

And so he cries.

Crying, easier, brings them closer. As fighters. As a family. As to souls matched by a hand they both exhaust their lives to end. 

"I never got to say goodbye," says Harry, because they're the truth, the only trying his mind wants to remember.

"And I will give you a better world than dreams," says his father, lips touching the side of his head, because it is also the truth.

Because it is a promise.


End file.
